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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

[...] There is a clear correlation between close proximity to a body of water and better psychological and overall health outcomes, said Michael Depledge, chair of Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter Medical School.

Depledge has been studying the effects of so-called "blue environments" for a decade, helping to shepherd a number of research projects that have caught the attention of the U.K. government and the European Union (EU).

Spending time near the water, "promotes physical activity and general fitness," reducing the incidence of diabetes and other diseases associated with obesity.

But it also slows down our heart rate and reduces stress hormones, boosting our mental health, which Depledge calls "the second great epidemic we're facing."

I told you fishing was good for the soul but you were all poo-poo, he's a redneck, poo-poo.

Source: Being Near a Body of Water Makes Us Calmer and Healthier, Science Shows

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takyon writes:

HPE supercomputer is still crunching numbers in space after 340 days

HPE's mini supercomputer launched into space last year has survived the harsh conditions of zero gravity and radiation for almost a year. The Spaceborne Computer isn't the greatest supercomputer and has a performance of one teraflop, runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is built out of two HPE Apollo Intel x86 servers with a 56Gbps interconnect.

NASA wanted to see if a computer would last for a year - roughly the time it takes to reach Mars - inside the International Space Station (ISS). So, HPE offered to tuck its Spaceborne Computer aboard SpaceX's CRS-12 rocket and send it into the abyss. "It has now been in space for 340 days", said Mark Fernandez, America's HPC technology officer at HPE and co-principal of the experiment, during a panel talk at the ISS Research & Development Conference on Wednesday in San Francisco.

[...] The machine hasn't been radiation hardened, and relies on a few software tricks to stop it from corrupting, something Fernandez calls "autonomous self-care". Continuous health checks helps keep the computer in check, and when it detects any potential hardware failures, it runs at a slower pace or enters "idle mode", where it powers down.

Previously: HPE Supercomputer to be Sent to the ISS

Related: Rodent Research-9 Experiments Sent to the ISS

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takyon writes:

At a two-part hearing discussing the future of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine proposed reducing the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope's (WFIRST) budget by about a third in fiscal years 2020 and 2021 to help fund the cost-overrun JWST:

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said July 25 that, in order to address the delays and cost overruns with the James Webb Space Telescope, the agency may seek to slow down development of another flagship astrophysics mission.

Testifying before the House Science Committee in the first half of a two-part hearing on JWST, Bridenstine suggested that slowing down work on the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) until after JWST is launched could be a way to deal with JWST's increased cost while maintaining a "balanced portfolio" of large and small astrophysics programs.

"The idea of WFIRST presumed that JWST would be on orbit and delivering science," he said. "So it is my recommendation that we move forward with WFIRST after we move forward with JWST."

"It is true we can do some development now. I'm not saying that we need to shut down WFIRST, and we shouldn't do it," he added. "What I'm saying is there's opportunity here."

The second part of the hearing will involve questioning of Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush on the 26th.

See also: NASA's next great space telescope is stuck on Earth after screwy errors

Previously: WFIRST Space Observatory Could be Scaled Back Due to Costs
Trump Administration Budget Proposal Would Cancel WFIRST
House Spending Bill Offers NASA More Money Than the Agency or Administration Wanted
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Delayed Again, This Time to March 2021, Cost at $9.66 Billion

Original Submission

takyon writes:

HTC has hit back against claims of declining VR sales figures:

The blog post in particular references a report from Digital Trends which talks about VR sales figures from Amazon, and proceeds to point out a number of ways which the data presented could be misleading.

Several points made by HTC Vive are ones that have also been addressed by VRFocus, as seen in an article about the modern VR cycle, and some comments in the weekly VR vs. article. HTC Vive were not pulling punches right from the very start, evening saying in the introduction: "Analyst reports are in and apparently, it's curtains for Virtual Reality (VR). Pardon us if we're not heeding the alarms. News of the so-called death of VR comes once a year and is greatly exaggerated."

From there, the blog post proceeds in a point-by-point fashion, discussing how early consumer VR was largely driven by smartphone-based devices such as the Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard. Not only have these devices been superseded by standalone units like the Oculus Go, which offer a better visual experience, but the promotional offers which were available for phone launches have now long since passed. HTC Vive also point out that PC-based VR companies are yet to release any solid sales figures, and that much of the growth of premium VR has been centered around location-based VR centres, something which the Digital Trends report did not address.

Vive blog post.

Related: HTC's Vive Pro to Launch on April 5
Facebook Launches Oculus Go, a $200 Standalone VR Headset
VirtualLink Consortium Announces USB Type-C Specification for VR Headsets

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JesusAmieiro writes:

Google has updated its Play Store developer policies to ban several more categories of apps, including cryptocurrency mining ones and apps with disruptive ads, as reported by Android Police.

When it comes to cryptocurrency apps, Google says mining apps are now prohibited, but apps that “remotely manage the mining of cryptocurrency” are still permitted. Apple recently banned apps that mine cryptocurrency, stating that, “the only cryptocurrency mining apps allowed are those that mine outside of the device, like cloud-based mining.”

Repetitive apps are now prohibited in the Google Play store. These are apps that mimic or provide the same experience as apps that already exist on the platform. Apps can be removed if they copy content from another app without adding anything new or unique, or if a developer makes multiple apps that have similar content and user experiences. Additionally, “apps that are created by an automated tool, wizard service, or based on templates and submitted to Google Play by the operator of that service on behalf of other persons are not allowed,” the company explains.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A shout out to everyone keeping the site running.

takyon: The last time you got 'preciated was in 2015.

• System Administrator Appreciation Day
• Sysadmin trained his offshore replacements, sat back, watched ex-employer's world burn
• UC Berkeley students' heroic efforts can't stop CalCentral from crashing

martyb: An obligatory xkcd Devotion to Duty.

For some light reading see: When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow.

And please join me in thanking TheMightyBuzzard, mechanicjay, audioguy, Deucalion, Ncommander, and paulej72 who have kept this site (and all the attendant backend services) running! And, if some of those names do not look familiar, that gives you an idea of how good these guys are! Thanks to all you!

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has been able to capture telescopic images at visible wavelengths from the ground that are sharper than those from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) has used an adaptive optics mode called laser tomography to capture images of distant objects in the solar system. The laser tomagraphy compensates for atmospheric turbulence resulting in more detail than anything prior. It works by stimulating sodium ions in the upper atmosphere using two pairs of lasers to calculate the turbulence and adjusting a deformable secondary mirror thousands of times per second in response.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Caught in the iron grip of the galaxy's most powerful gravitational field, a star known as S2 passed within a scant 20 billion kilometres (12.4 billion miles) of the supermassive black hole lurking at the heart of the Milky Way this past May, streaking by at an astonishing 3 percent the speed of light, or more than 25 million kilometres per hour (15 million mph).

Numbers were in close agreement with predictions made using Einstein's theory of general relativity, revealing a phenomenon known as gravitational redshift in which light from S2 is stretched to longer wavelengths in the gravitational field of the black hole.

In other words, at that speed (0.03c), it could travel from the Earth to the Moon in... one minute. And, orbit the Earth in a mere... six seconds.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

PC Gamer, Engadget and Gamezone report that software vendor Denuvo has taken legal action in Bulgaria against a man known as Voksi, who cracked their video gaming DRM. His equipment has been seized by the police.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

YouTube expands its VR app to Samsung's Gear VR device and lets you watch videos with strangers

YouTube is expanding its virtual reality app to support Samsung's Gear VR devices, and it's also adding a new feature that lets users watch a video together and chat. If you own a Gear VR device, you'll be able to download the app from the Oculus Store beginning this week, Google announced today in a blog post.

YouTube has been conspicuously absent from the Oculus Store, and it's been a significant selling point for Google's Daydream VR platform, although it's also available on PlayStation VR headsets, and Oculus Rift or HTC Vive users can access it through SteamVR. You could access YouTube through the Gear VR's web browser, but this update still closes a notable gap in the Gear VR's video ecosystem. YouTube doesn't mention supporting Oculus' new mobile device, the standalone Oculus Go.

Users can now also party up with friends or strangers to watch and chat about videos together in a VR space. In the example YouTube gave, users can ride a virtual car together or watch other VR videos. To access the feature, tap the Watch Together icon located under the play controls on your Daydream View or Gear VR headset.

Meanwhile, Facebook has added a "Watch Party" feature that syncs video streams and adds a chat box.

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

"White House economic advisers are spreading the word that second-quarter GDP, out Friday, may surpass 4% - the first time growth has hit or exceeded that number since the third quarter of 2014, FOX Business has learned.

Ahead of the data, Trump administration officials are preparing a major victory lap and plan to use the strong data points as proof that the president’s economic policies of lower taxes and deregulation have reversed years of economic malaise that followed the financial crisis and President Barack Obama’s fiscal agenda, according to people close to the White House."

[...] If GDP does surpass 4% on a quarterly basis it will be the first time it has done so since the third quarter of 2014, when it registered 5.2% during Obama’s second term in office. Even so, economic advisers in the Trump administration, such as Larry Kudlow, have blamed Obama’s policies of higher taxes and enhanced regulations for the relatively feeble economic growth during his eight years in office, where GDP never grew above 3% on a yearly basis.

[...] Still, as the White House prepares to tout GDP as evidence of the administration’s economic prowess and progress, some business leaders and economists have expressed doubts that certain fiscal policies, as they relate to trade, may be problematic and soon endanger growth.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

New York State and the nation's second biggest cable provider (Charter Spectrum) aren't getting along particularly well. Early last year, Charter Spectrum was sued by New York State for selling broadband speeds the company knew it couldn't deliver. According to the original complaint (pdf), Charter routinely misled consumers, refused to seriously upgrade its networks, and manipulated a system the FCC used to determine whether the company was delivering advertised broadband speeds to the company's subscribers (it wasn't). Charter has tried to use the FCC's net neutrality repeal to claim that states can't hold it accountable for terrible service, but that hasn't been going particularly well.

Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180723/08030840291/new-york-state-threatens-to-revoke-charters-cable-franchise-bullshitting.shtml

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Almost every microcontroller with integrated flash features firmware readout protection. This is a form of content protection which aims at securing intellectual property (IP) as well as cryptographic keys and algorithms from an adversary. One series of microcontrollers are the STM32 which have recently gained popularity and thus are increasingly under attack. However, no practical experience and information on the resilience of STM32 microcontrollers is publicly available. The paper presents the first investigation of the STM32 security concept, especially targeting the STM32F0 sub-series. Starting with a conceptual analysis, we discover three weaknesses and develop them to vulnerabilities by demonstrating corresponding Proofs-of-Concept. At first, we discover that a common security configuration provides low protection which can be exploited using our Cold-boot Stepping approach to extract critical data or even readout-protected firmware. Secondly, we reveal a design weakness in the security configuration storage which allows an attacker to downgrade the level of firmware protection, thereby enabling additional attacks. Thirdly, we discover and analyze a hardware flaw in the debug interface, attributed to a race condition, that allows us to directly extract readprotected firmware using an iterative approach. Each attack requires only low-priced equipment, thereby increasing the impact of each weakness and resulting in a severe threat altogether.

By observing changes in SRAM, one can reverse-engineer the basic control flow, find out the usage of specific addresses and may also discover briefly visible secret data. The system is only allowed to run for a precisely controlled duration and is then stopped. The contents of the SRAM is read out and a snapshot is created. With well chosen and increasing runtime duration this is similar to stepping through the firmware, since only a few instructions are executed between each SRAM snapshot.

Paper (PDF) and presentation (PDF).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

China's Plan to Seize a Near-Earth Asteroid Sounds Surprisingly Feasible

For centuries, humans have extracted minerals from the Earth with reckless abandon, but it's only a matter of time before our desire for gold, platinum, iron, tungsten, and other useful ores will exceed our planet's ability to provide them. But what if we could look beyond Earth for the raw materials we need to power the engines of industry? We'll spare you the disingenuous prattle about how this sounds like a sci-fi movie, because the fact of the matter is asteroid mining is right over the horizon, and a group of Chinese scientists is already trying to figure out how to snag a near-Earth asteroid out of space to harvest all its goodies on Earth.

"Sounds like science-fiction, but I believe it can be realized," Li Mingtao, Ph.D., a researcher at the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, tells Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua. Li and his colleagues introduced their plan at a competition in Shenzhen in which participants proposed innovative future technologies.

Their plan, which involves a constellation of satellites in an orbit around the sun that would search for asteroids, wrap a massive bag around an asteroid, and ferry it back to Earth, has significant engineering obstacles. Even once they get a spacecraft to intercept an asteroid and envelop it in some kind of strong material, they'll still have to get it here. That's where a giant, unfolding heat shield comes in, to keep the asteroid from burning up upon reentry. It may sound crazy, but it's just one of many equally ambitious ideas floating around in the asteroid mining field. And as far as asteroid mining schemes go, it sounds pretty reasonable.

So far, Li and his team have been working with the Qian Xuesen Laboratory of Space Technology, under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, to identify a suitable target, reports Xinhua. This will likely be a near-Earth asteroid about 30 feet in diameter. Even a small asteroid would be hard to wrangle, but it could still potentially contain billions of dollars worth of precious metals.

I'm envisioning two ways of getting asteroid chunks down to Earth without burning them up: either a controlled landing of a small portion (tens or hundreds of tons) of minerals using a BFR or other reusable rocket, or diverting a heat-shielded asteroid (or small chunk of one) into Earth orbit and then controlling its descent. Possibly into a desert instead of an ocean.

Related: Luxembourg Announces Investment in Asteroid Mining
NASA Asteroid Mission -- Metals "Worth" Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars
Asteroid Mining Could Begin in 10-20 Years
"Mission Success" for Arkyd-6 Asteroid Prospecting Demonstration Spacecraft (Planetary Resources has since run dry on funding)

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Nutrition scientists have long debated the best diet for optimal health. But now some experts believe that it's not just what we eat that's critical for good health, but when we eat it.

A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms, the innate 24-hour cycles that tell our bodies when to wake up, when to eat and when to fall asleep. Studies show that chronically disrupting this rhythm — by eating late meals or nibbling on midnight snacks, for example — could be a recipe for weight gain and metabolic trouble.

That is the premise of a new book, "The Circadian Code," by Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute and an expert on circadian rhythms research. Dr. Panda argues that people improve their metabolic health when they eat their meals in a daily 8- to 10-hour window, taking their first bite of food in the morning and their last bite early in the evening.

This approach, known as early time-restricted feeding, stems from the idea that human metabolism follows a daily rhythm, with our hormones, enzymes and digestive systems primed for food intake in the morning and afternoon. Many people, however, snack and graze from roughly the time they wake up until shortly before they go to bed. Dr. Panda has found in his research that the average person eats over a 15-hour or longer period each day, starting with something like milk and coffee shortly after rising and ending with a glass of wine, a late night meal or a handful of chips, nuts or some other snack shortly before bed.

That pattern of eating, he says, conflicts with our biological rhythms.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission